Wilsonianism within the Treaty of Versailles:Consonance or Contradiction

IntroductionóWilson's Fourteen Points headline
the post-war agenda

Ended by the armistice of November 11, 1918, World
War I was the costliest, most bitter, and most widespread armed conflict
the world had ever known. The four years of fighting claimed the
lives of nearly 10 million soldiers (a number much greater than had died
during the wars of the previous century) and as many as 21 million men
were wounded.[1]
Besides the cost in human lives lost or impaired, World War I carried a
final price tag to the belligerent nations of around U.S. $340 billion.[2]
A war of that magnitude left all of Europe devastated and desperate for
a lasting resolution to the conflict that would prevent such a horror from
ever recurring.

At the end of the war, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson
was undoubtedly the strongest political figure in the international scene.
Representing the country whose late entrance into the war had tipped the
balance and finally allowed the Allies to defeat the Germans, he traveled
through the Allied countries as a modern messiah who had liberated the
democratic peoples from imperial German rule.[3]
Furthermore, Wilson gained enormous political power through the strength
of the American economy, as France and Britain were desperate for American
help to rebuild their shattered economies after several years of all-out
war.[4] Finally,
Wilson was the moral leader of the post-war period thanks in large part
to his vision for a strong international peace, a vision he had shared
in a January 1918 speech known as the Fourteen Points.

A direct response to a proposed peace conference
that took place in early 1918 prior to the end of the war, the Fourteen
Points speech elaborated the terms Wilson considered essential to a fair
peace settlement, or as Wilson had earlier called it, a ìpeace without
victory.î[5] In
that memorable earlier speech on January 22, 1917, three months before
U.S. entry into the war, Wilson had stated his belief that a one-sided
settlement of the conflict would be of no value, because the loser would
later feel compelled to reclaim what it had lost.[6]
Instead, the only basis for a lasting peace would be a peace forged among
equals on the principles of justice and democracy.[7]
It was on these beliefs that Wilson founded his Fourteen Points, one manís
vision for a safer and more peaceful world.

Though the speech cannot seamlessly be translated
into a post-war peace settlement where one side had been defeated, nonetheless
Wilson clearly believed in a number of fundamental principles that would
form the basis for a new world order necessary to secure an enduring peace.
Besides the eight points relating to particular geographical and political
changes necessary to any proposed peace, the remaining six points constitute
the tenets of Wilsonianism for purposes of this paper:[8]
open covenants of peace (Point One); absolute freedom of navigation upon
the seas (Point Two); removal of economic barriers to trade (Point Three);
reduction in armament levels to the lowest point possible (Point Four);
respect for the self-determination of colonial populations (Point Five);
and an association of nations to provide collective security (Point Fourteen).
Although Wilson did not specify the means by which he sought to achieve
these objectives, his Points called upon each nation to act in the greater
interest of the world at large, rather than in its own individual interest.[9]
This was the foundation for his internationalist agenda in pursuing an
end to the war and in seeking a new world order to maintain peace thereafter.

The shift away from Wilsonianism: compromise
or changed convictions?

Although representatives from twenty-seven nations gathered at the Paris
Peace Conference on January 18, 1919 to begin drawing up a formal peace
settlement, the shape of the settlement was squarely in the hands of three
men in particular: Franceís Premier Georges Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson,
and Britainís Prime Minister David Lloyd George, pictured from left to
right.[10] [See
also a brief description of the personalities and roles of the ìBig
Threeî during the conference.] Wilson had convinced Lloyd George
and Clemenceau to take the Fourteen Points as a blueprint for negotiating
the peace treaty, which was only fair since Germany had signed the armistice
ending the fighting on the expectation that the resulting peace would seek
to implement Wilsonís objectives.[11]
But immediately the conference delegates decided not to allow Germany to
participate in the conference, for as the vanquished party, it did not
have the right to determine its fate. Furthermore, the war had been
long and brutal, and the sentiments among the Allies toward the Germans
were nothing short of hatred.[12]
Soon thereafter, the blueprint was functionally discarded, and the direction
of the conference shifted away from Wilsonianism and the foundational principles
for creating a new world order toward the singular purpose of punishing
Germany to prevent it from future aggression. Wilson had attempted
to address in the Fourteen Points what he had perceived to be the primary
causes of the war (including imperialism, militarism, secret alliances,
and balance of power politics) in a scrupulous effort to prevent those
factors from causing future conflicts.[13]
But the conference and resulting Treaty turned into a piecemeal attempt
by the Allies to make the world a safer and better place for themselves.

Historians disagree on Wilsonís role during the directional
shift of the conference. A substantial majority claim Wilson remained
committed to the principles of his vision but found himself obligated to
make concessions to Lloyd George and Clemenceau in order to salvage the
conference and obtain any peace settlement.[14]
Although the other two Allied leaders had paid lip service to Wilsonís
ideas,[15] during
the negotiations they were clearly acting out of national self-interest.
Thus, according to this theory, the strength of their resolve to take home
a treaty very favorable to their citizens left Wilson with no choice other
than to compromise certain principles in order to make any progress at
all. But at least one historian, Manfred Boemeke,[16]
instead portrays the departure from the Fourteen Points and subsequent
arrival at Versailles as a natural progression of Wilsonís convictions
vis-à-vis Germany and its people. Having long believed the
primary German flaw to be its autocratic government, which did not allow
the expression of the peopleís will, he became convinced by the end of
the war that the German people themselves were just as militaristic in
nature as their government. Thus, he saw the role of the Paris Peace
Conference as a trial of both defeated Germany and its people, and he resolved
in his own mind to impose retributive justice upon them. He even
became an advocate of including the cost of Allied military pensions in
the reparations imposed upon Germany (see discussion below), despite the
counsel of his advisers that this was contrary to the logic of the Fourteen
Points,[17] because
the Germans needed to understand fully the dire consequences of war.
Boemeke also describes a Wilson who was actively defending the Treaty after
its signature, both at home and abroad (and beyond the need to convince
the U.S. Senate to ratify it), based on his sincere belief that the Treatyís
terms were morally just and right.

The consequent disregard of visionary principle

Though the precise role Wilson played in the abandonment
of his broad objectives is not the concern of this paper, the important
fact is that, one by one, those objectives were compromised in the negotiations
of the Treaty of Versailles. The first principle sacrificed was Point
One (ìopen covenants of peace, openly arrived at, Ö diplomacy shall proceed
Ö in the public viewî), and ironically it was Wilson himself who caused
its compromise even before the negotiations commenced. Wilson had
fully (and naively) believed that if the peace negotiations were held under
the public eye, the people would demand justice in the form of a stable
and fair peace, preventing future war through the observance of international
law and mutual respect. He had also believed that the people would
restrain their political leaders, who otherwise would be predisposed to
seek the best resolution possible for their respective countries.[18]
Thus, it would have been consistent with his principles for Wilson to insist
that the negotiations in Paris remain open to the public. However,
Clemenceau and Lloyd George had just received resounding votes of confidence
from their home electorates, who were openly pushing for harsh retribution
against Germany as well as compensation to themselves for their losses
suffered because of Germanyís aggression.[19]
Therefore, to avoid the risk of codifying the un-Wilsonian spirit of the
frenzied post-war political atmosphere, Wilson insisted that the negotiations
be closed to the press.[20]
Perhaps he was implicitly hoping that he could still convince the other
Allied leaders of the importance of his vision to future peace, or perhaps
he was merely trying to conceal the extent to which he no longer believed
in his own vision for peace. Either way, though the idea of open
international agreements would be later codified in the covenant of the
League of Nations (see Article 18 of the Treaty), the Paris peace conference
had failed to set a good example for others to follow.

Point Two, the freedom of the seas, was also rejected
in the early stages of the negotiations. Britain refused to surrender
its clear naval advantage in the name of some vague new principle,[21]
and after a war in which the navies had played an important role, it is
understandable that Britain would not give up its greatest comparative
advantage. Nonetheless, it was an obvious demonstration from the
beginning of the conference that the victors were not willing to sacrifice
their own national interest on behalf of a greater global interest, whatever
that global interest might be. Wilson quickly saw he was not going
to win on this point, and he dropped it to save his political battles for
other points.

Point Three of the Fourteen Points speech seemed
to be a sine qua non of Wilsonís plan for international economic relations
after the war, advocating ìthe removal Ö of all economic barriers and the
establishment of an equality of trade conditions.î Implicit in that
statement was the idea that an open and strong international economy would
bind nations together and reduce the trade tensions that can escalate into
war. But although the notion of removing trade barriers is never
explicitly refuted in the Treaty of Versailles, Point Three is probably
the single most violated Point in spirit. The Allied leaders, reacting
to public opinion that demanded some meaningful reward for their four years
of terrible suffering, resolved to impose upon Germany the obligation to
repay an enormous sum of war reparations to the Allies (see the details
Treaty Articles 231 to 263). Historically used as a measure of victorís
justice, whereby the victorious forced the vanquished to pay for the costs
of the war,[22]
reparations after World War I were unlike any imposed following previous
wars merely because of the sheer magnitude of the war. In fact, the
amount of reparations to be imposed upon Germany was so large and complex
that the conference could not agree on a final figure nor on the components
of the damages. The final figure, announced at the London conference
on reparations on May 5, 1921, was 136 billion German Marks, or roughly
33 billion U.S. dollars.[23]

Clearly, Germany was not in a position to sustain
such a foreign suction of its capital without bordering on internal collapse,[24]
yet the Allies, with full knowledge of the situation, insisted on setting
the amount as high as conceivably possible to achieve variations on one
underlying theme: making themselves better off at the expense of
a crippled Germany. First, the Allies needed capital with which to
rebuild their war-torn countries (especially France, whose industry had
been nearly wiped out),[25]
and extracting payments from the vanquished Germany was the easiest means
to obtain the capital. Second, forcing Germany to pay large sums
of money over a period of years would thoroughly disable the German war
machine, since the German government would have no leftover resources to
devote to it.[26] Finally,
reparations leveled the economic playing field at the end of the war, placing
the same vise upon Germany that war debts to the U.S. had placed upon Britain
and France.[27]

But while these rationales made sense to the self-serving
interests of Britain and France, and leaving aside the question of whether
reparations were an economically prudent solution to the German problem,
they were fundamentally inconsistent with the tenets of Wilsonianism.
Wilson had advocated a settlement that ìwould prevent a renewal of hostilities
by Germany yet Ö be as moderate and reasonable as possible,î[28]
for he believed that German economic recovery was pivotal to the post-war
stability of Europe.[29]
Furthermore, he had also been opposed to the idea of reparations because
they seemed to place all the blame for the war on Germanyís shoulders,
a view he believed to be inaccurate.[30]
But, in this case, Wilson apparently came to agree with the British and
French that reparations were just,[31]
deserting his earlier desire for a moderate settlement toward Germany in
an effort to convince the Germans that aggression simply does not pay off.

Next, the map of the world had to be redrawn at the
end of the war, and the diplomats in Paris proceeded to follow many of
the territorial provisions of the Fourteen Points, Points Six through Thirteen
(see Treaty Articles 27 to 117). Though not a focus of this paper,
the territorial divisions went far beyond those proposed in the Fourteen
Points, as the Big Three used their status as victors to divide up the
German empire, granting to the newly established nations of Czechoslovakia
and Poland parts of formerly German territory with strong concentrations
of German citizens (compare the maps of 1914 and 1924 below). Although
this was a violation of the principle of nationality or self-determination
espoused by Wilson after his Fourteen Points speech (and somewhat embodied
in Point Fiveís objective of respecting the interests of colonial populations),
this was deemed necessary in order to further restrain German power by
building up strong states around it.[32]
As for the German colonies outside of Europe, the question of national
self-determination for those populations simply never arose.[33]
When Wilson refused to allow the British to annex German colonies abroad,
the South African Jan Christian Smuts invented the ìmandateî system that
was included in the Treaty. In that system, the formely German
territories weretaken away and transferred to the League of Nations (discussed
below), which assigned or ìmandatedî them to other states who would administer
them in trust for the League (Articles 118 to 158).[34]
But this innovative formula, hailed by the conference as a Wilsonian victory,
was seen by some as merely a façade, giving de jure control to the
League, while securing de facto control for the Allies.[35]
Furthermore, having rejected the spirit of self-determination of Point
Five with respect to the former German colonies, the Allies were clearly
not ready to offer the principle to the residents of their own colonies.[36]
Thus, similar to Points One, Two and Three of the Fourteen Points, Point
Five is clearly compromised (or even non-existent) within the Treaty of
Versailles.

Wilsonís Point Four is one point that figures prominently
within the Treaty of Versailles, yet in a way that misses the spirit of
his valiant idea. In the Treaty, the Allies went to great pains to
ensure that German armaments were reduced to the lowest point imaginable
(see Articles 159-213). These detailed articles limited Germanyís
military forces and its arsenal to specific lists and numbers and even
ordered the demilitarization of the Rhineland as a buffer for France.
Though clearly infringements of German sovereignty and unprecedented in
a post-war peace treaty, the Allies considered these measures necessary
to secure a safer world.[37]
It had become common among the Allied leaders and peoples to view German
militarism as a national state of mind,[38]
and one French statesman at the Paris conference later wrote: ìGermany
turned towards war, as flowers turn towards the sun.î[39]
Many thought it inevitable that Germany would engage in future aggression
unless its military power was effectively restrained. As for Wilson,
he was content to apply his principle to the defeated Germans, upon whom
it could be rather easily imposed, but it was also his ultimate intention
to apply the notion of arms control more generally. At the same time,
however, he was advocating a stronger U.S. Navy,[40]
and the only mention in the Treaty of Versailles of his larger ambition
of global disarmament is found in Article 8 (part of the Covenant of the
League of Nations), which prescribed plans for the collective reduction
of armaments. Thus, on the whole, Wilsonís principle of reduction
of armaments was painstakingly imposed upon Germany, but only vaguely and
distantly required of the Allies.

The one point from Wilsonís Fourteen Points speech
to be substantially included in the Treaty of Versailles in the spirit
Wilson had intended it was Point Fourteen, the creation of an assembly
of nations for the purpose of collective security. One can surmise
that Wilson believed collective security to be the essential process to
prevent future wars as horrible as World War I, since he was willing to
sacrifice many of his other principles to ensure Allied support for the
League. Thus, this was Wilsonís great triumph, and presumably he
made sure it appeared at the very beginning (Articles 1 ñ 26) in the final
version of the Treaty, to herald his internationalist principles in a document
otherwise filled with compromises of those same principles. The covenant
of the League began by spelling out the structure and procedures of the
new assembly. All sovereign states would be invited to participate,
except Germany, who would be allowed to join only after a period of probation,
and Russia, who was not invited to join due to its internal turmoil.[41]
Article 10 provided the raison díetre of the League, prescribing the use
of collective action (including military force) against an aggressor state
having violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another state.
Articles 12-15 and 17 provided a series of procedures for states to resolve
disputes by peaceful means (including arbitration by the Council of the
League, or by the Permanent Court of International Justice). Thus,
in this one major contribution of Wilsonian ideals to the Treaty of Versailles,
an ambitious new world order was instituted based on the principles of
peaceful modification of boundaries and peaceful resolution of disputes,[42]
no small achievement in light of the previous centuries when war was really
the only mechanism of dispute resolution.

Conclusion

In January 1919, the Allies set out to establish
a resolution to the Great War that would prevent any future atrocity of
that magnitude. Wilsonís admirable ideas from his Fourteen Points
speech had attempted to respond to the perceived causes of World War I,
preventing future war by curtailing the conditions that gave rise to war.
Yet in the end, the Treaty of Versailles more closely resembled a truce
of exhaustion rather than a comprehensive resolution of societyís problems.
But unlike a real truce, World War I had winners and losers, and the Allies
as victors had the power to impose the terms of the truce on Germany and
its defeated allies. In so doing, they focused on one cause of the
war (to the seeming exclusion of all others): German aggression.
Whether one characterizes the Treaty of Versailles as a free-for-all division
of the spoils of victory, as some do, or as a thorough and calculated attempt
to prevent a future war caused by German militarism, it is clear the Allies
did their best to neutralize German military, economic, and even political
power. That approach to peace clearly contradicted or at least severely
compromised almost all of the fundamental tenets of Wilsonianism, as expressed
in the Fourteen Points. The peace treaty was so divergent from the
spirit of the Fourteen Points that Germany very reluctantly (and only under
the threat of more hostilities) signed onto the harsh and far-reaching
terms the Allies had laid down in the Treaty.[43]

Wilson (center, with black top hat)splitting the jubilant crowd aftersigning the Treaty on June 18, 1919

Furthermore, although the signature of the Treaty
on June 28, 1919 led to much celebration that the war was officially over
and a new era based on the noble ideas of collective security and peaceful
resolution of disputes had begun, there were two important failures associated
with the new world order that undermined its long-term success. First,
by redrawing the map of the world at the Paris conference and simultaneously
enforcing the newly-drawn boundaries with collective security under the
League, the Allies seemed to permanently freeze the territorial post-war
status quo.[44]
Germany would later come to resent that status quo, and Adolf Hitler would
purposefully endeavor to subvert the Versailles world order.[45]
Second, Wilson had decided during the negotiations to postpone resolution
of the most difficult problems for discussion within the League.
With respect to issues such as a plebiscite in Upper Silesia (former German
territory granted to Poland), what to do with Russia, and the Japanese
plea for a recognition in the Treaty of racial equality, Wilson hoped the
League would be able to more easily solve the issues in the years following
the conference, as he put it, ìwhen the war psychosis has abated.î[46]
But in the end, Wilson surely regretted postponing resolution of those
issues until later, since, after the U.S. Senateís isolationist refusal
to join the League, the U.S. did not have a say on those issues, and the
League was weakened as a result of the U.S. absence. Thus, despite
the fact the League was a lofty goal and a significant accomplishment for
Wilson and his diplomacy, the potential success of the achievement (and
of Wilsonís legacy) was cut short.

Finally, the actual extent to which Wilson agreed
with the harshest parts of the Treaty and even pushed for their inclusion
is subject to debate among historians. However, it seems safe to
conclude that Wilsonís attitude concerning Germany and the nature of the
peace settlement probably changed during the eighteen months of American
belligerency, most likely in favor of a harsher sentence against Germany.
Thus, it may be somewhat inaccurate to blame Wilson for sacrificing his
principled idealism or to condemn Clemenceau and Lloyd George for forcing
Wilson to compromise and accept a harsh settlement. But that leaves
open the question of whether Wilson can be blamed for abandoning his principles
and jumping on the retributive bandwagon. Nevertheless, no
matter how it came to be, the Versailles peace was clearly inconsistent
with Wilsonís ideals of early 1918. Though the treaty embodied Wilsonís
vision of the rule of law (enforced by collective security) regulating
international relations, the document was a great departure from the rest
of his visionary principles. While it is anyoneís guess whether a
treaty consonant with the whole of Wilsonianism would have prevented a
second world war, it is at least clear that the Treaty of Versailles played
a role in the events leading up to the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

[For a brief note on the Treaty of Versailles as
fodder for Hitlerís fire; blaming the Big Three for their retributive peace;
and other reflections on the Treaty, see Authorís
Personal Conclusions.]

1. Edward Coffman,
ìWorld War I,î 1999 World Book Multimedia Encyclopedia, Deluxe Edition,
CD-ROM, p. 17 (from class photocopy packet).2. Id.3. James L. Stokesbury,
ìA Short History of World War I,î 1981, p. 309.4. William R. Keylor,
ìVersailles and International Diplomacy,î in The Treaty
of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Ch. 19, Boemeke,
Feldman & Glaser, eds., 1998, p. 477.5. Coffman, supra
note 1, at 19.6. Ross Gregory, ìThe
Origins of American Intervention in the First World War,î 1971, p.
115.7. Id. at 116.8. This term is used
elsewhere in scholarly literature to refer to differing facets and/or combinations
of Wilsonís beliefs, but these six principles (Points I-V and XIV of the
Fourteen Point speech) will be the focus of this paper,
to observe how they appear vel non in the Treaty of Versailles.9. Akira Iriye, The
Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Vol. III, ìThe
Globalizing of America, 1913-1945,î 1993, p. 71.10. The other member
of the Big Four, Italyís Premier Vittorio Orlando, is omitted from this
discussion, since history portrays his role during the peace conference
as insignificant to the outcome of the Treaty.11. Coffman, supra
note 1, at 19. See also, Ronald Steel, ìPrologue: 1919-1945-1989,î
in
The
Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, Boemeke,
Feldman & Glaser, eds., 1998, p. 22.12. Stokesbury, supra
note 3, at 308.13. Id. at 311; Robert
H. Ferrell,
Woodrow Wilson and World War I: 1917-1921, 1985,
p. 8.14. Iriye, supra
note 9, at 59.15. Keylor, supra
note 4, at 472.16. The references
in this paragraph are found in Manfred Boemeke, ìWoodrow Wilsonís Image
of Germany, the War-Guilt Question, and the Treaty of Versailles,î
inThe Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years,
Ch. 25, Boemeke, Feldman and Glaser, eds, 1998, pp. 603-614.17. Ferrell, supra
note 13, at 143.18. Keylor, supra
note 4, at 474.19. Id. at 480-481.20. Id.21. Stokesbury, supra
note 3, at 314.22. In fact, Germany
had imposed war reparations upon France at the end of the Franco-Prussian
war of 1871 in the amount of five billion French francs. Keylor,
supra
note 4, at 497.23. Harold G. Moulton
and Constantine E. McGuire, Germanyís Capacity to Pay: A Study
of the Reparation Problem, 1923, p. 60.24. Id. at 245, 247.25. The German army
had deliberately destroyed most of Franceís industrial strength in the
occupied territory, with the intent of crippling France as a postwar commercial
competitor. Keylor, supra note 4, at 497. As a result,
France was able to obtain in the Versailles Treaty control of coal mines
in the Saar region for fifteen years. Elisabeth Glaser, ìThe Making
of the Economic Peace,î
in The Treaty of Versailles:
A Reassessment After 75 Years, Ch. 15, Boemeke, Feldman & Glaser,
eds., 1998, p. 386.26. See, e.g., id.
at 382.27. Antony Lentin,
ìA Comment,î
in
The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment
After 75 Years, Ch. 10, Boemeke, Feldman & Glaser, eds., 1998,
p. 224.28. Wilson to Edward
M. House, Oct. 28, 1918, PWW, 51:473, quoted in, Thomas J.
Knock, ìWilsonian Concepts and International Realities at the End of
the War,î inThe Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment
After 75 Years, Ch. 4, Boemeke, Feldman & Glaser, eds., 1998, p.
117.29. Iriye, supra
note 9, at 64.30. In fact, Article
231 of the Treaty places the moral blame on Germany for causing the war.
Some historians see this article as one of the harshest Treaty articles
and most inconsistent with Wilsonianism. See, e.g., Coffman,
supra
note 1, at 20. However, at least one author disagrees, stating
instead that it was the American delegation that advocated Article 231,
to please the Allied public by recognizing Germanyís moral debt despite
the reality that Germanyís economic debt could never possibly be paid in
full. Keylor, supra note 4, at 500.31. See earlier discussion
of Wilsonís role in the shift away from Wilsonianism.32. Iriye, supra
note 9, at 60.33. Keylor, supra
note 4, at 494.34. Id.35. Stokesbury, supra
note 3, at 313.36. Keylor, supra
note 4, at 495.37. Iriye, supra
note 9, at 60.38. Nicholas Murray
Butler, (pseudonym Cosmos), The Basis of Durable Peace, 1917, p.
55.39. André
Tardieu, The Truth About the Treaty, 1921, p. 17.40. Iriye, supra
note 9, at 60.41. The rest of this
paragraph is adapted from Iriye, supra note 9, at 62-63.42. Knock, supra
note 28, at 114.43. Iriye, supra
note 9, at 59.44. Id. at 63.45. See generally,
Mildred Salz Wertheimer,
Germany Under Hitler, World Affairs Pamphlets,
No. 8, 1935.46. Ferrell, supra
note 13, at 146.